Everyone has stories of when they were little kids and said the weirdest, cutest, or funniest thing ever. Well, I'm going to tell mine. When I was little, we lived in Taiwan. I must have been about 2 or 3 years old at the time. Now, when you're a little kid, it is a well-known fact that you do a craft and have some sort of take-home item in Sunday school. That Sunday, we made finger puppets out of paper. I'm not sure how those finger puppets made it safely home while being carried by me on one of my parents motorbikes, but it's safe to say that they did. Our lesson for the day had been Noah's Ark (Don Miller's Blue Like Jazz has some interesting thoughts on teaching Noah's Ark to children, but I won't go into that here), so of course, my finger puppets were of Noah and his three sons. Being the intense feminist that I am (hahaha...very funny), I was incredibly upset that I did not have a Noah's wife. My dad thought he could solve this problem very quickly, and said "Well, you could be Noah's wife." Giving him (I hope, because that would make it funnier) a very scornful look, I said simply "No, I can't." And when he asked why not, I replied "Because Noah is made of paper, and I'm made of real."
Made of real. No matter how big of a smile this story brings to my face, it still strikes me how deep of a response that really was. I am only recently beginning to learn how true that comment is. I've never felt this emotional in my life. I've never felt this happy. I've never felt this sad. I've never felt this angry. I've never felt this frustrated. I've never felt this much joy. It's as if for years I have been looking at things with only a flashlight with dying batteries, and suddenly someone opened the curtains and turned on lights and everything is so much clearer.
Everything is clear. All the feelings are clear. I have never felt so deeply. I've always fought it off, saying to friends "don't worry about it, you won't hurt me, you can't anger me, you won't irritate me." My friend Sarah kept telling me I was only human and that she would. But still, over and over again I would deny it and say that she couldn't, say that I just didn't let things bother me like that. But maybe it's ok to let things bother you. Maybe it's ok to be angry with your friends sometimes. If they love you, they can take it. And they'll still be there when you calm down. I keep blocking out the feelings. But if you block out the bad, the good goes too. Maybe God is telling me it's time to feel.
God. It's always been up and down with God. Sometimes I'm a "good christian". Other times I'm a "bad christian". But in some ways, that doesn't really matter either, because no matter what, he'll always love me the same. In other ways, it really matters a lot. I'm reminded of the Israelites in the wilderness. They would turn from God, something would go wrong, they cried out to God to deliver them, He would, they'd be all good again, and then the cycle would restart. That's exactly what I'm like. That's exactly what we're all like. But God is always there. God will always take us back.
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When I was leading at that camp last week, we were learning the memory verse John 10:27-29, in which it says "No one can snatch them out of My hand."
One of the teens there was talking about being unsure of whether or not he was a Christian, and feeling guilty whenever he swore, and his group leader held a coin in his hand and told him to try and get it out. He tried several times, and then eventually the leader said to him: "Even when you sin, that's where you are. No one can snatch you out of His hand, not even yourself."
That blew me away.
Its so amazing to think that no matter how much we screw up, God still loves us. But not only that; people can love other people from a distance, like a distant radiant glow...God on the other hand, is always there, right beside us, ready to pick us up...And I think part of that is because He knows what we've gone through...Hebrews 2:17-18 has really been on my heart, such a good reminder that Jesus knows exactly what were going through...
Amen! Remember that one. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. (Romans 8)
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